


Cleansed by Rain

by Zedrobber



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Athos drinks too much, F/M, Outdoor Sex, Pre-Canon Flashback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:52:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8006452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zedrobber/pseuds/Zedrobber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athos sits in the storm and remembers another storm, years ago.<br/>Written to deal with some seriously frustrating writer's block.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cleansed by Rain

“It’s raining,” Aramis calls from the shelter of a doorway. “Athos, come inside.”

Athos doesn’t reply. He barely even blinks, lost in his memories, and eventually, Aramis shakes his head and leaves him to his thoughts.

 

The rain drums onto the table in a deafening roar; not so much droplets as a constant, pouring stream, slashing into the empty cups and beating against Athos’ doublet in an endless, rhythmic stutter. It streams down his face like tears, dripping from his eyelashes and running down the furrows between his brows. He barely moves, barely breathes, lost in another world, another time. The bottle in his hand is cold and damp, and he clutches at it like a drowning man, feeling the slip-slide of the glass beneath his rough fingertips as though from a great distance.

 

Thunder crashes overhead, and he raises his eyes to the sky, misery etched on every line of his face and starkly outlined in the white flash of lightning that follows.

Another swallow of wine, cold and sour. He doesn’t taste it, doesn’t taste anything except the clean wash of rainwater when he licks his lips and the ghost of a memory, jasmine-scented and sweet.

 

_“Look at the rain!”_

_She presses her face to the glass, wondering and awestruck, watching the storm throw itself against the sides of the house with shuddering force. Thunder rolls over them, and then lightning cracks open the sky, and she gasps in delight, turning her face back to him with an expression of dazzling innocence and bewildered restlessness. Her eyes are huge and dark, and her excitement is infectious._

_“I want to go out in it.”_

_“It’s freezing!” he objects, looking at her bare feet, her flimsy nightgown. “You’ll catch your death-“_

_“I don’t care,” she says, stubbornly, and he feels his resolve weakening. “Just for a moment- please?”_

_She turns the full force of her gaze on him; bites her bottom lip in that playfully coy way that she knows kills him every time, and he is lost._

_“For a moment,” he agrees, and she is on her feet in a moment, grabbing his hand between both of hers and tugging him to the doorway._

_“What are you doing?” he laughs, and she smiles at him exultantly._

_“Play with me.” She cannot keep the innocence completely on her face, a wicked, conspiratorial gleam in her eyes, and he follows, recklessly abandoning all of his arguments and his reason in favour of her hands on his and her laughter ringing through his home._

_It **is** freezing; he shivers uncontrollably while she dances ahead of him, her head tilted backwards as if to drink in the whole storm, her feet light and nimble on the sodden grass that he trudges through like molasses. She looks like a wild thing, a creature of the rain and wind, her nightgown soaked through and sheer within minutes, clinging to her like a second skin. He can see the curve of her breasts, her nipples hard and dark against the fabric; can see the soft sweep of her thighs and the arch of her back, and he groans inwardly, feeling somehow as though she has expected this. He follows after her, deeper into the fields, and soon the house is out of sight behind them._

_Her nightgown whips around her in the wind as she stops, turning to him with a thoroughly knowing smile, and he feels a familiar lurch in his stomach, a curl of arousal sliding through him as she stares him down. He approaches warily, his shirt soaked and his breeches heavy and stiff with damp, and eyes her. “Anne,” he breathes, and it is stolen away by the wind, and she laughs at it, at him, and reaches for his hands. Hers are cold and pale but strong, surprising in their vitality, and he allows himself to be drawn in._

_Pressed together, he can feel the heat of her body through the flimsy nightgown, can feel the rabbit-fast beat of her heart in the pulse of her throat as he bends to kiss her neck. She tastes of rain, and jasmine, and earth- he breathes her in as though she is oxygen, and she tangles her hands into his dripping hair, pulling him in, whispering in his ear._

_“Here. Now- please.”_

_The slow curl blazes bright, sudden and shocking; he curses, jolting as he feels one of her hands slide between them, unlacing his breeches and sliding inside. Her fingers curl around his cock with wicked, teasing slowness, rain-slick and cool against his hot flesh. He groans and steadies himself against her, but she withdraws her hand before any rhythm can be started and he has to choke back a sob of desperation, instead pulling him with her by the lacings of his breeches. He stumbles forward, barely feeling the rain streaming over him, the wind howling and trying to push him back. Thunder booms overhead and his skin prickles, his eyes half-closing against the lightning. He sees her laugh into it, primal and reckless, her eyes closed and her hair loose, and he is consumed by hunger for her._

_She tugs him forward and sinks into the grasses under the tree they think of as theirs; big and sheltering, it is a favourite spot for picnics and lazy lovemaking in the golden, sun-warmed days of summer. But this will not be lovemaking._

_He falls onto his knees before her, her legs already parting for him, her nightgown pulled carelessly over her head and tossed away. She is shivering but not from cold- her whole body thrums with the storm, and he can feel it too. He **is**_ _the storm, as surely as she, and he abandons his clothing with similar haste, dipping his head between her legs and tasting rain and sweat and **her**. He feels her hand twist into his wet hair, pulling him closer and holding him in place; a curiously demanding gesture that he gives himself up to fully, allowing her to take control like the thunder made flesh as he worships her with tongue and heart and soul._

_She arches and screams into the wind when she comes; the sound snatched from her lips and carried far away, a token for the storm. He is on her in seconds, shaking and unable to wait any longer, desperate and aching and afraid of his own savagery as he sinks his cock deep inside her, burying himself in her heat. She clings to him as he fucks her relentlessly, slamming into her again and again, carried away by the howl of the wind and the endless, staccato beat of the rain on his back. It feels to him as though she howls with it, and him too, as though their bodies are the grass and the leaves and the sky even as he feels the tight, wet heat of her cunt around him, feels the shiver of her body against his, the wet slide of skin against skin and the sharp pain of her nails in his shoulders. Her legs wrap around his hips, her body arching with him, and he can feel the hot steam of her breath against his neck, can hear her whispering “yes, yes- please, **fuck** ,” like a prayer that spurs him on to further brutality, digging his hands into the wet earth above her shoulders and pounding into her, his own breathing hard and erratic, grass and soil churned up between his fingers as he digs for purchase on the wet ground._

_He comes with a guttural, wordless cry that rocks through him and echoes the thunder coiling over the fields, feeling her shaking underneath him as she slips a hand between them, a few strokes of her finger all it takes to push her over the edge a second time, her sobbing breaths lost to the rain._

 

He remembers how they had laughed, then; how it had felt as though they were washed quite clean, lying side by side in the rain and watching the leaves of their tree sway above them. He remembers how innocent they had been after, how they had been children again in that storm, shy and simple and sweet with one another.

He remembers her rain-blacked hair and her huge, laughing eyes, and the aching, fierce love he had nurtured for her, quiet and steady as his own heartbeat.

He remembers the lies, and the deaths, and the churned-up mess of his soul that had been left in the wake of her destruction.

 

 

He lifts his eyes, blinking away rain, to find her watching him. She is soaked through as surely as he is, her dress sodden and her hair plastered to her head, but she is as unmoving as a statue, the rain bouncing off her like hailstones.

She hesitates and comes closer, the hem of her dress dragging in the wet earth of the yard.

“What are you doing here.” It isn’t a question; he is too tired for questions.

“The storm,” she says, tentatively. “I couldn’t stay indoors.”

“You never could,” he says with a noise that could be a laugh, and then he pales as he realises the memory he has just dropped between them.

He glances at her, sees her mouth twist in a self-deprecating smile. “You’re right.” Another pause, another careful, assessing look at him. “If I recall, you were never very good at staying inside either.”

He blinks, meeting her eyes and feeling the knowledge of shared memory like a thread connecting them. “Do you want a drink?”

“No,” she says quietly, and she’s at his shoulder now, so close he can smell her, rain and jasmine and the tide of reverie washes over him, pulling him down in its undertow again. He goes willingly enough, drowning for her and leaning into her body heat unconsciously, his eyes half-closing.

“Anne,” he breathes, and it swirls out before him on a cloud of steam. She reaches for him, takes his head in her hands, her fingers cold and damp and pale. “Please.” He doesn’t know what he’s asking for, but she does, and she leans down to kiss him, her lips soft and warm and clean like rain until his tears slide salty-hot between them, the dam breaking finally after years of drought, and he realises he is the storm after all.


End file.
